310 LUTHER BURBANK 



But the final cross, in which the Japanese 

 plant with its small flowers, inferior in every- 

 thing except lack of color, was brought into the 

 coalition, calls for explanation. A general im- 

 pression has long prevailed that a hybrid race 

 whether of animals or of plants is likely to be 

 more or less intermediate between the parent 

 races; so perhaps the common expectation would 

 have been that the cross between the new hybrid 

 race of daisies and the obscure Japanese plant 

 would result in a hybrid with medium-sized 

 flowers at best, and, except possibly in the matter 

 of whiteness of blossom, an all round inferiority 

 to the best plants that I had developed. 



But, in reality, there appeared the beautiful 

 mammoth Shasta, superlative in all its qualities, 

 surpassing in every respect each and all of the 

 four parent stocks from which it sprang. 



This apparently paradoxical result calls for 

 explanation. The explanation is found, so far 

 as we can explain the mysteries of life processes 

 at all, in the fact that by bringing together racial 

 strains differing so widely a result is produced 

 that may be described as a conflict of hereditary 

 tendencies. And out of this conflict comes a 

 great tendency to variation. 



The reasons for this are relatively simple. 

 Heredity, after all, may be described as the sum 



